


Wound (Entwined)

by maltvinegar (maltpowder)



Category: Dororo (Anime 2019)
Genre: Accidental Incest (Unrevealed), Clothing Used for Sensation Play, Crying, Dubious Consent, Feral Behavior, First Time, Grinding, Hand Jobs, Hyogo and Mutsu have lines but not enough to character-tag them, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Manhandling, Mutually Dubious, Narrative uses he/him to refer to Dororo (brief mention), Non-Penetrative Sex, Outdoor Sex, Sensation Play, Sexually Inexperienced Aggressor(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:07:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21701206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maltpowder/pseuds/maltvinegar
Summary: The tapestry of fate is thickly woven pile with many looping threads interlaced along the warp.After slaying thebakemonoganiat the coast, Hyakkimaru and Dororo headed into Daigo's land, toward the town of Banmon. Tahoumaru rode through on his way home to report on his actions and the mysterious demon-slayer. With nightfall looming, Tahoumaru and his entourage stopped overnight on their way back toward Daigo's palace, where Tahoumaru would eventually overhear the truth of his father’s connection to Hyakkimaru.Between parting in the afternoon at the coast and completing the ride home the following morning, Tahoumaru encountered Hyakkimaru in the forest on the edge of Banmon, where they explored one another without words.
Relationships: Hyakkimaru/Tahomaru (Dororo)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 117
Collections: Consent Issues Exchange 2019





	Wound (Entwined)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rirren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rirren/gifts).



_Hyakkimaru._

Tahoumaru’s skin prickled with chill through his clothes despite the layers of linen and silk robes beneath his wind-rustled _jinbaori_. He felt the weight of Hyogo and Mutsu’s eyes on his back, where embroidered gold _tomoe_ stiffened the distinctive vest against the breeze. Turning frustration, pride, and curiosity over in his mind, Tahoumaru strode toward his horse and called out to them.

“Mutsu! Hyogo! We ride. It is time to begin our return to report news to my honored father. Find lodging for tonight.”

The response was immediate. Locking his fingers together, Hyogo knelt to boost Tahoumaru onto the back of his steed while Mutsu took the most lightly-laden of their horses. From atop the chestnut, Mutsu surveyed the most secure path along uneven dirt road until the horse found its speed, and they were both obscured by the hoof-beat cloud of dust that rose in their wake. It was Mutsu’s duty to ride ahead and secure rooms of a quality that the son of Lord Daigo could rise refreshed enough to ride at a hot pace in order to reach that same Lord by midday and inform him of all that had occurred at the coast. If Daigo’s secretive searching for a disfigured young man without limbs held, as Tahoumaru suspected it would but could not yet discern why, Tahoumaru and his companions would be obliged to remark on the abilities and demeanor of the boy who slaid the demon.

Tahoumaru nodded Hyogo away from his side, and Hyogo went to settle himself atop the thick-necked older stallion he would be riding. Curiosity and excitement mounted in Tahoumaru as they set out toward the forest that marked the edge of his father’s land, thinking of Hyakkimaru’s placid face and the force of the breeze he had generated by swinging his blade.

_It seems that we both travel the same path._

Or at least, they were supposed to have travelled the same path. Despite the speed of their horses and the singular road, Tahoumaru did not catch sight of Hyakkimaru along the way. Mutsu met up with Tahoumaru and Hyogo again at an old, respectable and well-maintained inn just on the northern edge of the town of Banmon, well positioned to the road which would take them deeper into the heart of Daigo’s land. It was appointed with two rooms, a hearth, and a soaking tub large enough to accommodate Hyogo’s broad body. There was one set of sliding paper doors within the quarters, protected from the elements by the elegant shape of the shingled overhang which also served to direct draining water from the roof out over the exterior step. These doors faced onto an area of young growth in the forest. Tahoumaru left the horses to Hyogo’s care and moved through the rooms to open them, taking in the scent of distant wood-fires and the faint rush and bubbling of an unseen spring.

Setting aside his stiff-shouldered jinbaori and heavy, red silk outermost _kimono_ , Tahoumaru’s mind returned to Hyakkimaru. The chill of evening needled at him, sharp and dense with humidity from proximity to coastal winds, as Tahoumaru recalled the flickering single dark layer of tattered hempcloth lashed against the demon-slayer’s pale skin by gusts of wind where he stood atop the crab’s gaping shell. Restlessness accumulated in Tahoumaru’s body as he sat and thought, holding himself still in respectable contemplation, until he could stand it no longer. As he rose to his feet, Tahoumaru removed his riding _hakama_ and some few layers of refined linen under-robes from his person. Standing, finally, in only the undermost linen kimono of his usual attire, Tahoumaru left his garments over the standing screen separating the bathing tub from view. In this brief sliver of time between Hyogo’s final duties settling the horses for the night, while Mutsu was busy personally preparing the young prince’s food in the inn’s kitchen, Tahoumaru had a chance to satisfy the sudden impulse to exert himself and to do so alone. He stepped down from the floor’s edge, and followed the sounds of water downhill, winding his way into the forest.

  


* * *

  


Dororo had built a small fire in the northerly woods of Banmon, at some distance from its rumored Gate and safely hidden from footpaths other wanderers had left as they made their way through the forest on the outskirts of town. Despite the weight of Tahoumaru’s tails of coin at his back, where Dororo hid them in the upper coiling of his undercloth, he made the usual stream of noise over a clear spot of forest floor where he liked the look of bedding down, within earshot of a fresh spring. Stuffed full and satisfied by a modest variety of hot buns sold by an elderly woman at the place where the larger road and their wooded footpath had bent in snaking loops toward one another, he was sleeping now, curled next to the low fire built of the detritus of the pines. Earlier, with his mouth full, Dororo had reached for Hyakkimaru’s pendant. Through Dororo’s expressive, simple way of talking, Hyakkimaru understood him to be saying something about wanting to understand it better, even through the sounds of chewing. Though it had been on his body for most of his life, Hyakkimaru allowed Dororo to take the cord from around his neck, and listened to him babble over it until their time to rest was over.

While Hyakkimaru had been sensing the energies of the forest, Dororo finished eating and begun to sleep, on his side with the treasure they had earned heavy between his back and threadbare shirt. The pendant curled in his tiny hand, Dororo shivered as he slept. Hyakkimaru had not yet determined what was so unpleasant about the firm tension and tingling alertness in his skin that came with the sensory experience Dororo told him was described with the word “cold,” but could sense that the change in Dororo’s position was an indicator of his discomfort. Hyakkimaru untied his belt from his waist and removed his well-worn robe, sniffed them both, and draped them over the sleeping (but never quiet) boy, taking care that the bundle of cloth and skin was not in danger from the fire’s heat. For a while he listened, and cast his regard out into the area around the outside of the reach of their fire’s warmth. Satisfied there was no danger to Dororo prowling around their camp, Hyakkimaru got to his feet to explore. Following the faint noise of moving water, Hyakkimaru ventured out from the reach of the small fire’s ambient heat on his own.

Fate or the lay of the ground brought both young men to chance upon a mossy bank of clay-dirt and shed pine needles beneath the darkening sky; Tahoumaru, in his undermost linens, arrived to find Hyakkimaru bending to ankle-deep water with cupped hands, in only the modest drape of a worn-thin cloth _fundoshi_. Hyakkimaru turned his head at the sound of a greeting and allowed Tahoumaru to come closer. As the son of the land’s lord approached, Hyakkimaru took in the shape and consistency of Tahoumaru’s aura. The shape of that bright, pure light, roiling with the confidence of command, was familiar to him, but he did not make any attempt at a reply. He simply regarded the space Tahoumaru occupied, and raised his cupped hands to drink the stream-water he had collected. It was then that Tahoumaru realized that his habitual language was high and refined, with many syllables and formal words, delivered in the melodic drama of courtly orators. A blind and withdrawn young man, who had become a killer of beasts among peasant folk, would have very little exposure to such talk. Even considering as much, Hyakkimaru’s responses to Tahoumaru’s approach were entirely nonverbal. Tahoumaru could not help marvelling that somehow, such a person was able to identify demonic auras and discern them from human killing intent, as well as from the innocent, and become the warrior who had left Tahoumaru himself, despite all of his training, breathless at the sight of his power.

Suspecting such an impossible situation, wherein Hyakkimaru could barely understand what he might say, Tahoumaru scoffed at himself, but did move toward the spring to mirror Hyakkimaru’s position. Before Tahoumaru could bend or cup his hands to drink from the water’s source, Hyakkimaru extended his damp palm toward this new companion, as if offering it for a curious dog to sniff -- as though Tahoumaru were ordinary as a wandering beast! Tahoumaru felt his neck and ears awash with heat. Hyakkimaru simply waited, unguarded in the absence of blood lust or ill will from Tahoumaru’s increasingly curious aura. Hyakkimaru’s regard stirred an indescribable longing in Tahoumaru’s gut; the encounter felt _real_ in a way at odds with the performance of lordliness that was the way of landed nobility. Thrilling with adrenaline, Tahoumaru cautiously indulged his growing impulse to touch Hyakkimaru, in order to get a better understanding through that sense of Hyakkimaru’s physical state in the dim isolation of the night.

Hyakkimaru waited for the boy prince to reach him with another sense, beyond the radiance of his being and the rising-and-falling cadence of his voice. The pressure and weight of touch told Hyakkimaru that Tahoumaru _was_ still curious about him. He could not feel the way Tahoumaru ran fingertips over the oiled wood of his hand and wrist, but could tell that Tahoumaru’s touch was a light one. Hyakkimaru allowed his palm to come to rest against Tahoumaru’s shoulder, as Tahoumaru’s fingers explored the place where Hyakkimaru’s prosthetics fitted together at the elbow, and then to where the cap of his shoulder disappeared into the carefully-sanded cup meant to cradle what little residual limb he had on either side. Tahoumaru fell quiet, only the hitch of his breathing letting Hyakkimaru know that Tahoumaru investigated his body in a state of wonder.

At the edge of his shoulder, where Hyakkimaru’s collarbone stood out in the moonlight against the lean muscle of his chest, Tahoumaru’s fingers curled, holding Hyakkimaru as if an embrace was a thing of five fingers, rather than the encircling of arms and press of chest against chest. Hyakkimaru looked into the shifting intensity that was Tahoumaru’s essence, and felt both the softness of the inside of Tahoumaru’s wrist against his skin, and the callouses many years of sword practice left on the skin of the poor and rich alike. The experience wasn’t what Hyakkimaru expected-- it didn’t feel like the mutual exchange of information, because Tahoumaru was not introducing himself so much as making Hyakkimaru better-known to him.

Hyakkimaru craned his neck to sniff at Tahoumaru’s hand, felt Tahoumaru recoil, and heard a bewildered laugh before he felt the weight of that hand return. The pad of Tahoumaru’s thumb stroked light as a breeze across the edge of Hyakkimaru’s jawline. Hyakkimaru reached out with one unfeeling hand, setting it atop Tahoumaru’s head as gently as he would stroke the face of a stray cat.

Tahoumaru, fascinated with this passive version of the warrior he saw before, took Hyakkimaru’s face between his palms, slowly turning it back and forth, looking closely at Hyakkimaru’s elegant bone structure, the faintest color from chill across his cheeks, the shape of his mouth, and the placid acceptance of Hyakkimaru’s unseeing eyes as he regarded Tahoumaru through it all. The intimacy of this encounter gripped Tahoumaru’s heart, surrounding it with tightness and heat even as feelings of pride and desire dropped low into Tahoumaru’s core. He returned his hands to Hyakkimaru’s shoulders, flat and broad as he smoothed the rising goosebumps there.

Satisfied that there was no threat to him at Tahoumaru’s hands, Hyakkimaru relaxed into the lingering satisfaction of being touched with reverence, and allowed Tahoumaru to pull him by his wrists the few steps out of the chilly water. Once the sloping bank was at Tahoumaru’s back, Hyakkimaru stopped. Not realizing how close behind him the land rose, Tahoumaru startled to find that Hyakkimaru’s abrupt halt allowed Tahoumaru to dislodge Hyakkimaru’s prosthetics, and that Hyakkimaru was quite comfortable allowing his arms to come away in Tahoumaru’s hands, revealing the fine steel of the blades they sheathed. Tahoumaru sat back against the bank in his shock, but Hyakkimaru’s arms were well within his reach, and Hyakkimaru sensed that Tahoumaru quavered out of respect for his abilities without them. He made no move to put them back on, or retrieve them from where Tahoumaru set them across a flat, mossy rock. As though it had been Tahoumaru’s intention, Hyakkimaru presented his unsettling, beautiful, weaponized body for further inspection. Tahoumaru gazed at Hyakkimaru, along the length of his torso and over his hip, down the boy’s shapely right leg -- longer than Tahoumaru’s own legs and more slender through the thigh -- and back up the well-oiled and scarred wood of the left. 

_This was the condition in which you had overpowered so many demons...._

Tahoumaru had too much to express, and in response to Hyakkimaru’s silence, became silent as well. Experimentally, he placed the flats of his palms on Hyakkimaru’s hips, above the wrap of his fundoushi, coaxing more than drawing Hyakkimaru toward the bank. To Tahoumaru, who was used to being obeyed rather than humored, there was magic in Hyakkimaru’s indulgence of his curiosity. Hyakkimaru settled against the bank as though they were laying upon cushions together and cocked his head. Tahoumaru had wanted, quite privately, to share such intimate touches with an admirable man, and experienced a mounting pressure in his groin at Hyakkimaru’s patient regard directed down towards Tahoumaru’s hands.

Hyakkimaru enjoyed being touched in this way. He was unfamiliar, still, with pleasant sensations, and to be stroked felt very good. The shallow of his hip bone was sensitive under Tahoumaru’s thumb, and rocking into the touch stoked a growing restlessness in Hyakkimaru. Being regarded in this way felt good, unlike the uneasy watching of frightened folk. Tahoumaru’s quiet felt like a respectful thing. Hyakkimaru leaned toward Tahoumaru, nosing against the juncture of neck and jaw and breathing in the scent of him. Tahoumaru startled, thinking immediately of how he must smell of his horse and the ride and the woods over the aroma of the sandalwood soap it was his habit to use. Their bodies pressed together, and Tahoumaru felt Hyakkimaru’s reaction to the sensual touch crushed insistently against the place where Tahoumaru’s robe fell open across one sturdy-muscled leg.

Tahoumaru reached down between them and hooked his elegantly dexterous fingers under the rough linen of Hyakkimaru’s fundoushi where it cupped him, lifting it to the side so as to reveal Hyakkimaru’s erection. Hyakkimaru lay back, stretching out to enjoy the chill air across the heat of his arousal. Tahoumaru’s breath quickened as he settled his hand against the dark curls at the base, wrapping his fingers around the shaft of Hyakkimaru’s cock. Hyakkimaru’s clenching thigh, but neither his cheeks nor his chest, bore a darkening flush. Tahoumaru’s expression grew flushed, brightening with the intensity of his focus. Hyakkimaru’s body clenched under his touch. It was not a flinch, Tahoumaru noted, but a controlled rescinding of Hyakkimaru’s earlier, near-total passivity.

Dragging his heels through pine needles and soil, the wooden one leaving a deep furrow in the earth, Hyakkimaru leveraged his weight and began, shamelessly, to buck up into Tahoumaru’s sword-calloused fingers. The friction excited him, made his skin hot and his breath ragged, what little sounds he made wordless, gasping, and rough. Tahoumaru’s cock pulsated between his legs, but rather than touch himself, he used his free hand to cup Hyakkimaru’s cheek and still the other boy from twisting his face this way and that as he struggled to process his body’s pleasure. Tahoumaru, once Hyakkimaru’s thrashing had stilled, took deep and calming breaths as an example, gently stroking Hyakkimaru’s jaw until their shuddering breathing synched. Tahoumaru made a sound of satisfaction at the way Hyakkimaru followed his lead, and rubbed the pad of his thumb over Hyakkimaru’s lower lip. With a sharp motion Hyakkimaru took the meat of Tahoumaru’s thumb between his teeth, drawing canines across the sensitive base of the digit and Tahoumaru’s palm.

Tahoumaru barked out a single startled laugh in wonder, enjoying the scrape of Hyakkimaru’s teeth against his hand. Hyakkimaru could have wrecked Tahoumaru’s sword hand with the power of his jaw, but instead he lost himself in the satisfaction of lightly working Tahoumaru’s hand between his teeth and thrusting up into his tightening grip. Gently pulling the tender part of his palm under his thumb from Hyakkimaru’s grip, Tahoumaru lay his tingling palm against the expanse of Hyakkimaru’s chest and pet him along the line from Hyakkimaru’s dusky, hard little nipple down his too-lean abdomen, across the dip and curve of his hip to explore the impossibly soft skin of Hyakkimaru’s right inner thigh. Hyakkimaru shifted the focus of his regard from Tahoumaru’s hands roving over his body up toward Tahoumaru’s face, appearing to gaze directly into his eyes. Tahoumaru’s shoulders twitched forward, and Hyakkimaru cocked his head, leaning his weight onto his elbows so that he could cast his regard down their bodies to where their auras seemed to merge. Hyakkimaru perceived the pleasure he would now always associate with Tahoumaru as a sparks of color, and was fascinated. Hyakkimaru pressed his back more firmly into the bank and rolled his hips upward, giving Tahoumaru access to the underside of that sensitive place where his thigh met the swell of his ass. His left leg was slightly slower, weighed down by his wooden foot, and it frustrated Hyakkimaru, who squeezed his thighs together so as to better control them. He wanted to revel in the sensations his body was finally giving him, through his skin and his new limbs -- so different from the pain of a beast’s claw in his flesh, Hyakkimaru wanted to lose himself in this delight.

Tahoumaru wrapped his arms around Hyakkimaru’s legs just above his knees, swallowing hard as he positioned Hyakkimaru’s knees together and caught them over his right shoulder.. Pressing his weight forward, Tahoumaru shuddered and lowered his head for a moment, returning the grip of one hand to Hyakkimaru’s cock as he pressed his hips against the smooth wood and flexing power of Hyakkimaru’s soft thigh.

Tahoumaru groaned at the contrast of texture and lowered his head into the cleft of Hyakkimaru’s neck and shoulders, making a sound of pleasure against Hyakkimaru’s skin. This powerful warrior, half-made of blades, allowing Tahoumaru to enjoy such lenience as to feel a sense of control over Hyakkimaru, intensified the ache in Tahoumaru’s cock. Breathing heavily, Tahoumaru planted his bare knee and opened the front of his robe, shoving his undercloth down so that he could thrust into, or more accurately, slap his cock against and then into the passage made between Hyakkimaru’s thighs and just against the dusky-colored and tightening skin over his balls.

Hyakkimaru did not understand how Tahomaru was using this part of himself -- he had noticed his cock’s getting hard sometimes, but it always went away unbothered. The cravings to touch it had bewildered Hyakkimaru since his skin grew, and so he had ignored it before now as a thing of simple function -- for relief. Tahoumaru seemed to be satisfying some other urge within himself that was very different from the one Hyakkimaru knew about, but Hyakkimaru was quickly discovering an intensity building within him at the feelings Tahoumaru’s actions stirred up. Hyakkimaru sensed, for he wasn’t unfamiliar with the desperate coupling of creatures, that Tahoumaru’s introduction in this way was some way of laying claim to Hyakkimaru -- or for Hyakkimaru to claim Tahoumaru, forming a bond between them of lancing pleasure.

Hyakkimaru enjoyed the sensation of Tahoumaru’s breath against his skin and the sound of his exertion in his ears, and it was not a very long while of grunting and friction before a small amount of something hot and wet mingled with the sweat between Hyakkimaru’s thighs. Tahoumaru’s body became a clenching undulation against Hyakkimaru’s, his breath pleasantly wet and ragged, accompanied by the occasional nip or kiss along the craning of Hyakkimaru’s neck, before Tahoumaru seemed to deflate along with his spent cock. Hyakkimaru could not see it, but had the sense that Tahoumaru was regarding him with unguarded warmth, like an invitation. If he had eyes, he would have known Tahoumaru’s expression for a breathless smile.

Hyakkimaru took Tahoumaru’s openness as his chance. He didn’t need his wooden arms, he simply twisted his hips, rolling Tahoumaru over onto his back among the pine needles. It was Hyakkimaru’s turn to introduce himself to Tahoumaru, so he chose a similar way of doing it. Stabbing one blade into the clay dirt next to Tahoumaru’s shoulder, Hyakkimaru positioned himself over the boneless, gasping Tahoumaru. Tahoumaru was solid, dense with muscle from years of practice in the dojo, atop the horse, and on the archery field -- but more importantly, from years of full and frequent meals. Hyakkimaru tensed his body, his weight sinking into the ground through his blades, and leaned over Tahoumaru to press against him, feeling the rise and fall of Tahoumaru’s breathing. Hyakkimaru smelled the tang of their exertions and the dampness of the undergrowth, and lowered his face into Tahoumaru’s thick, silky hair. Tahoumaru could not move. The cutting edge of Hyakkimaru’s blades were not pointed toward him, and the killing intent he had radiated toward the monster crab in the bay was absent, but the intensity and unrestrained quality of his actions stilled Tahoumaru and made his heart pound. He felt quite suddenly uncomfortable, practically smothered by Hyakkimaru’s powerful but scrawny body, and the predator’s focus in his regard. 

Tahoumaru could not breathe, even as he gasped for air, even though Hyakkimaru’s weight was not yet heavy against his body. Hyakkimaru’s touch was more uncanny than that, a ghostly brush of contact where the top of his knee planted between Tahoumaru’s thighs, nudging the still-tingling flesh of Tahoumaru’s cock and balls . A sickly unease settled over Tahoumaru, as he looked up into Hyakkimaru's attentive but unseeing face. What was Tahoumaru doing, prone on the dirt of the forest floor, a blade on either side of him, the unrestrained hard nakedness of another boy on top of him?

Hyakkimaru didn't settle his hips between Tahoumaru's thighs, but used the placement of his right leg to pin Tahoumaru where he lay, setting his other knee into the moss beside Tahoumaru's lowest rib. Shifting his weight, Hyakkimaru released the pressure he had been leaning into Tahoumaru's balls and straddled his ribs, both feet hooked into the joins of Tahoumaru’s hips and thighs, keeping his thighs wide apart. Before Tahoumaru could move to close his spread legs or leverage his weight beneath him, Hyakkimaru seated himself, the hot weight of his hard cock smacking down against Tahoumaru's chest. 

From this distance and vantage, Tahoumaru could clearly see where it rested against his skin between his firm, dark nipples, and could smell his own release across Hyakkimaru’s thighs mingling with the scent of Hyakkimaru's arousal. Tahoumaru clamped his mouth shut, determined to make no pitiful sounds while Hyakkimaru rutted against his breastbone. Though he had spent many years in the dojo, even occasionally grappling with Hyogo as he practiced warskill, and though he was bigger than Hyakkimaru, Tahoumaru could not force his legs closed. The wood of Hyakkimaru’s prosthetic leg was sanded and oiled to smoothness, but it was much heavier than his flesh and bone, and ideally placed to keep Tahoumaru flat against the ground. Tahoumaru raised his arms, the fabric of his sleeves rustling as he reached for Hyakkimaru’s body and braced his palms against the muscles of his abdomen. Despite the pressure, Hyakkimaru bent forward over Tahoumaru’s face, sniffing and nudging as he explored with his nose, teeth, tongue, and lips. Instinct told Tahoumaru to flinch away and close his eyes, but he refused to be timid in front of the demon-killer whose power had stirred complicated feelings within him. He wanted Hyakkimaru to respect him, and Hyakkimaru had shown what he was willing to accept -- it was Tahoumaru’s turn to show his own limits, even with his lungs straining and his heart in his throat, so he shifted his hands down over Hyakkimaru’s lower belly to dig thumbs in against the curve and dip of Hyakkimaru’s hip bones. He wasn’t prepared for the sound this touch produced, as Hyakkimaru bucked his hips twice in immediate response, arching his back with a startled but sexually gratifying groan.

The rumpled fall of Tahoumaru’s sleeves brushed against Hyakkimaru’s cock. Tahoumaru, in this position, decided that he would not take Hyakkimaru directly in hand, but he did want to keep touching and exploring Hyakkimaru’s body. Tahoumaru hid his hand in his sleeve, wrapping the cloth around Hyakkimaru’s erection and slowly stroking him through the thin linen. The scent of Hyakkimaru’s pre-come and sweat were swiftly absorbed by the threads, as Tahoumaru watched Hyakkimaru’s writhing escalate toward frenzy, fascinated by the clarity of sensual satisfaction and encroaching orgasm on Hyakkimaru’s face.

Hyakkimaru felt quite suddenly that his cheeks were wet, tears seeping from around his false eyes in response to the intensity of the stimulation. Hyakkimaru basked in the rampaging of delight as a completely new sensory experience, overwhelming and delicious. Tahoumaru couldn’t take his eyes off of Hyakkimaru’s face, heaviness settling in his belly as he realized that Hyakkimaru was utterly new to the sensations.

_Could it be really be possible that he has never felt such things before?_

Tahoumaru had not felt the skin of another against his cock before, despite the availability and willingness of women across his father’s lands and the nearness of his confidants, until he had thrust himself between Hyakkimaru’s thighs. But he had taken himself in hand more than once, and knew what sexual pleasure was and what it would do to him, in a way that he could not sense from Hyakkimaru’s desperate grinding against his chest. Tahoumaru realized, and felt his cock respond to the clenching certainty in his gut that Hyakkimaru had no understanding of what they were doing. Tahoumaru swallowed his guilt for the moment, as Hyakkimaru loosed a gutteral sound and began rocking back onto his heels so that he could thrust his reddening cock more vigorously into Tahoumaru’s cloth grip.

Tahoumaru drank in this display, smothering his doubts in the vision of Hyakkimaru atop him, trembling as he took the last of his weight from his blades and the ground and rocked back against the rising swell of Tahoumaru’s second hardening. Tahoumaru stretched beneath Hyakkimaru’s weight and reached toward the rock formation, taking hold of Hyakkimaru’s discarded forearms and, one after the other, sheathing Hyakkimaru’s swords, as satisfied by the click as they slid into place as he was with the friction of their clothes and their skin. Once the edge of danger was no longer a distraction, Tahoumaru brought Hyakkimaru’s wooden palms to rest against the sloping muscle of his chest. Despite Tahoumaru’s expectation that Hyakkimaru would slide further back and allow himself to be ground up against, Hyakkimaru instead pushed forward, climbing his way up Tahoumaru’s torso until the young prince’s grip held him just a few centimeters from Tahoumaru’s face. Tahoumaru’s eyes widened and he struggled to stay braced even with his knees bent, feet planted against the solidity of the ground at his back, against the force of Hyakkimaru’s escalating response to sensation. Hyakkimaru unleashed a whining half-sob of a sound, his breathing more ragged and more urgent by the moment, as he clutched Tahoumaru’s chest. Hyakkimaru could not contain the flexing tension as it rolled through him, from his hips through his ass and down his thighs. Tahoumaru gritted his teeth, grunting, and took Hyakkimaru’s release full across his face, some stray drops soaking into the linen over his hands.

Tahoumaru was shocked, flinching for the first time from the splash against his skin and making a reflexive sound of disgust. How demeaned would he allow himself to be by Hyakkimaru?! Despite this, Tahoumaru was fascinated. How could this boy be so powerful and at the same time so trusting of him as to share such intensity with Tahoumaru? He could not make sense of it. Once Hyakkimaru's legs no longer restricted his thighs, Tahoumaru easily rolled them both over and used his weight to anchor Hyakkimaru to the ground. Tahoumaru leveraged his need to regain control against Hyakkimaru's hypersensitive twitching in the aftermath of his orgasm, and held him by his hips, so that Hyakkimaru's shoulder-blades were against the ground but he could not get purchase. In this way, Tahoumaru hauled Hyakkimaru’s body against him, one leg hooked over each shoulder. Hyakkimaru would have no problem regaining the upper hand if Tahoumaru allowed him a moment to think. Tahoumaru did not. Since Hyakkimaru, in his frenzy, had tried to claim Tahoumaru's mouth, though Hyakkimaru's cock was flushed an angry purplish-red and wet from rubbing against the weave of Tahoumaru's sleeve, Tahoumaru felt a fierce need to show Hyakkimaru that it was Tahoumaru who was doing the claiming. They were not finished.

Hyakkimaru cried out as Tahoumaru put his mouth up to Hyakkimaru's half-hard cock and bullied the slit of it with his tongue. Hyakkimaru tried to wipe the wetness from his cheeks, smearing tears. Tahoumaru dragged his teeth across the inside of Hyakkimaru’s right thigh and pressed the flat of his palm, still hidden in the folds of damp linen, over the tip of Hyakkimaru’s cock. Hyakkimaru squeezed his legs together on either side of Tahoumaru’s head, and the pair of them rolled over again, Hyakkimaru clutching at Tahoumaru’s body. Before Tahoumaru’s back hit the ground again, Hyakkimaru came again, and the intensity of it transformed Hyakkimaru into a shuddering, gasping creature. In what felt like a fraction of a moment Hyakkimaru’s strength returned to his shaking body, and Hyakkimaru scrambled off of Tahoumaru, shoving him away such that Tahoumaru fell back against the bank and skidded a few centimeters before managing to rise up to his feet again. Hyakkimaru leaned heavily against a tree trunk, hunched and panting and squeezing his legs together. Tahoumaru watched Hyakkimaru swallow the last of his tears and tucked his sensitive parts back into his fundoushi, sighing at the rough brush of the cloth against the places where the softer linen of Tahoumaru’s sleeves had given him so much overwhelming pleasure. Tahoumaru felt moved by the sight of Hyakkimaru straightening up, appearing to transform from a beast back into a young man. This struck Tahoumaru as though it were some ritual magic, and that by displaying his vulnerability Hyakkimaru had imbued Tahoumaru with some of the uncanny strength that emanated from Hyakkimaru’s calm attention. The sense of righteousness which settled over both their shoulders then eased the task of their necessary parting, even though Hyakkimaru’s unrealizing lust had led Tahoumaru to enjoy taking actions which he ought to have felt shamed his honor as a man. Even so, Tahoumaru was still hard, and Hyakkimaru abruptly scrambled away into the darkness of the forest to recover.

Adjusting his clothes, Tahoumaru made himself the firm promise that he would meet Hyakkimaru again soon in the heart of Daigo's land and, fate willing, continue this “conversation.” Struggling to contain any sign of his body’s condition, Tahoumaru strode away from where Hyakkimaru’s charismatic presence dissipated into the darkness and did not look back, keeping his back strong and straight until what he knew he _ought to feel_ after taking advantage of Hyakkimaru’s curiosity, or perhaps even innocence, through the amazement over Hyakkimaru’s openness to being explored in a way he didn’t seem to understand and the frustration of being left hard so suddenly, seeped back into his mind and the shaking took him. Tahoumaru leaned against a tree, bark scraping against his skin, and took a long while to control his breathing, while staring up through myriad branches at the stars.

Vision swimming, eyes burning and brimming with mingled lust and shame, Tahoumaru took himself in one clenched hand and pumped his fist roughly. With a growl of frustration, Tahoumaru blinked away his tears as vigorous desire rose up to overpower his better senses and contemplated again the way Hyakkimaru had indulged his curiosity and rutted into his hands like a beast. Tahoumaru had tolerated a level of degradation he could not let anyone know of, though he suspected both Mutsu and Hyogo knew of his absence from their lodging and were looking for him even at that moment, in these woods. Tahoumaru wiped his face with his sleeved bicep, mopping up all traces of tears, sweat, and come, before shrugging out of the upper half of his robe, letting its jacket hang down from the belt re-tied at his waist. From his tree, Tahoumaru moved forward to the next along his path, pressing one hand to its bark and facing close against it. If his attendants found him, they might not perceive his wicked hardness, even as Tahoumaru cupped one palm over the head of his cock and recalled Hyakkimaru’s breath on his neck, and the heat of Hyakkimaru’s mouth as he sobbed over the sheer newness of sex. 

If he’d been prepared or understood, Tahoumaru felt certain that Hyakkimaru would have held him against the bank face-down, bitten the back of his neck like a wild animal, and never allowed Tahoumaru make use of Hyakkimaru’s bewitching, doll-like body. Despite that certainty, Tahoumaru wanted to see Hyakkimaru again, and soon -- after he had told his father about this warrior, and inevitably promised to find out more about him to satiate the curiosity Daigo harbored for mysterious and disfigured (though thinking on Hyakkimaru’s beautiful body, Tahoumaru could only scoff at himself for thinking such a word) demon-slaying orphans. Finally, the recollection of shock at Hyakkimaru’s swordskill and the threat of Hyakkimaru’s blades plunged into the dirt on either side of his neck was enough to smother Tahoumaru’s guilt as well as his lust and released him from the grip of what he had done, at least for the time being.

  


* * *

  


His guards found Tahoumaru as though their young master were simply returning from a walk in the nearby forest, half-dressed and in only his least linens, stepping cautiously among young pine not too far-in from the edge of the woods. Tahoumaru’s hair was disheveled and his linen garment was soiled with debris from the forest floor. “A prince who goes without his guard will find himself wrong-footed, sir,” Mutsu said stiffly, despite bowing low.

“As you say,” Tahoumaru said, but gave no hint that his condition was unusual. “Hyogo, give me your outer robe.”  
Hyogo removed himself from the black silk and held it open, waiting as Tahoumaru stepped out of his soiled linen before wrapping himself in the handsome drape of Hyogo’s usual over-layer. Mutsu was already stalking back to secure their rooms for Tahoumaru’s safe return. Tahoumaru sighed, passing his discarded robe into Hyogo’s waiting hands.  
“Tomorrow, sir--” Hyogo began, peering deeply into the forest over Tahoumaru’s shoulder.  
“Will bring an early morning and a-- a vigorous ride, Yes.” Tahoumaru cut in, clearing his throat to correct a deepening in his tone.

As he stepped over the threshold Tahoumaru put private things out of his mind, but after he scrubbed the day from his skin, soaked in the steaming tub, and laid down to rest for the ride to audience with his father, Tahoumaru dreamt of keening pleasure, a tear-stained but placid, doll-like face, and a swift blade against a death-white thread of fate, which when it was cut turned red as love with dripping blood.


End file.
